My favourite city
Organised by Joachim Wenzel, this was more of a Stadtspaziergang, ending, completely by chance, with a very good lunch in Restaurant Schlosspark-Grill. Excellent traditional German and Balkan food and etremely friendly service. We had not reserved a table, and – in proper Christmas lunch mode – the restaurant was really busy, and yet they welcomed and accommodated eleven unannounced wanderers with big smiles. I would go there again any day.
Yet another undetonated WW2 bomb has to be defused today in Berlin. Always a logistical nightmare since an area in a radius of 500 m or so needs to be evacuated (apartment blocks, hospitals, nursing homes, U-Bahn and train stations etc. etc., and streets have to be blocked off, all to be on the safe side.
This has happened countless times while I have been living here, and as far as I remember, this is the third one since Corona hit us. There was one near where I live – luckily I was JUST outside the zone that needed to be evacuated – while we were in full lock-down last year in spring, and a bit later, there was one on Alexanderplatz – can you imagine – with the number of people living there, plus buses, tram lines, a train station and four U-Bahn lines converging there?
Of course Corona makes it even more difficult since the whole thing takes the best part of a day and people who can’t go to family or friends need to be accommodated and fed somehow or other, whether they are in quarantine or not.
It is laughable that, reportedly, many drivers have kicked up a stink about traffic jams around the affected area today. Oh dear – Berlin’s much worshipped drivers in their noisy, stinking heaps of metal have been inconvenienced – how awful. Of course they would feel entitled to ignoring the information about this and insist on going to the area anyway – after all, they are drivers of motorised vehicles, so they have more rights than all us mortals. (It has been all over the media for the last week – even I knew about it and I have been out of town …..).
I have always wondered – and now more than ever – why these things have not been detected somehow – surely the technology exists – and defused a long time ago. Why wait until builders or construction workers stumble upon them by chance. Because it is not urgent, you say? Well then why defuse and remove them at all instead of just leaving them there?
In autumn colours that are hanging on thanks to the fact that we have not had the usual several autumn storms (which we also did not have last year, as far as I recall). Perhaps Mother Nature decided to spare us, in view of the other troubles ….
Anyway, the day was a little misty, but dry and mild, so it was a very nice walk, led by Joachim Wenzel. Here the route on mapmywalk.
To finally take a look at Fürstenwalde an der Spree and not least the dog park in the area Hundeauslaufplatz Kleine Tränke, following this map – more or less.
The dog park turned out to be a lovely space, large and pretty and a section of normal forest fenced in. Plenty of opportunity for dogs to disappear out of sight and do their own thing for a little while (slightly unnerving, but Max is great at doubling back to check in with me at very regular intervals, and I did not even get to use the whistle today). It is also completely quiet, so next time, I will bring lunch, coffee and a book :-).
Here is a video of Max frolicking.
We walked there from the station through a large park, and afterwards we walked along the river, past the lock, though Fürstenwalde old town and back to the station. Max was restless both ways on the train. I guess we do not do this kind of thing often enough.
It was a very pleasant day out, despite the mist, and we ended up walking a total of nearly 15 km.
Eisenhüttenstadt on Wikipedia.
I used this book to plan a route. Or rather two routes. There is a lot to photograph and I will have to go back a second time, preferably for a couple of days.
I hope I am not offending anybody when I say it is a most peculiar place, at first sight at least. I am curious to know whether it is really as clean and tidy all over as the part I saw today. Clean houses, clean streets, clean cars. Bizarrely, also very few restaurants, and even fewer cafés. I looked hard for dilapidated buildings and found a total of two ,,,,
And I did not see any hotels, so I might find it difficult to find some sort of accommodation, preferably where I can have Max with me. Right now I am thinking a few days around New Year’s Eve. It is on the river that forms the border between Germany and Poland, with lots of nature all around, so a good place to walk and walk and be away from the fireworks (although I have no idea whether Max is afraid of fireworks).
Anyway, for now, this is the route planned for today. I did not completely follow it, since I also had to walk the two km from and back to the station (there were also no taxis, and seemingly also no bus that went directly from the station to where I wanted to start).
Another thing that was unusual: somebody, sitting on a bench outside the hospital, asked me to take a photo of them. In Germany. Where people often pull something over their heads at the sight of a camera, or even sometimes very agressively ask me to put the camera away (although that is a rare occurrence, it has happened to me a handful of times).
Since dogs are not allowed in cemeteries here, I thought I would squeeze in two of them this week. First, I swung by Volkspark Friedrichshain.
The route on Komoot: https://www.komoot.com/tour/388854275.
On the way to the park, I passed this memorial in Danziger Straße, which seems to double as a Corona memorial right now:
There are several memorials in Volkspark Friedrichshain. The memorial to Polish soldiers and German anti-fascists is is one of them:
More impressions from the park:
Before going walkabout in the Georgen-Parochial Friedhof I, I stopped for coffee (so nice to be able to do that again) at Café Nonna just inside the entrance. Cafés near entrances to cemeteries is a thing now.
Impressions from the cemetery:
On the way to the Jewish Cemetery in Schönhauser Allee, I came across this cozy bathtub scene in a not particularly cozy street:
Impressions from the Jewish Cemetery:
And finally, also in the Jewish Cemetery, I came across these relatively new ornaments. I wonder what that means in a very old cemetery which is no longer in use (but open to the public and a green oasis):
The route on Komoot: https://www.komoot.com/tour/384471362.
Started with a little detour to the Clara Zetkin memorial – Clara-Zetkin-Gedenkstätte – which is a small museum with a library and a sculpture garden. I did not go in, but I think it is open to the public now.
Bonus tip: There are NO PUBLIC TOILETS in Birkenwerder, and also not really any cafés to stop at, so on the way home I got off at the next station (in the direction of Berlin) where there is a public toilet on the square in front of the station. Also this sculpture:
And almost home, I could not resist getting off the train at S-Bahnhof Pankow-Heinersdorf to take a few photos of the former Güterbahnhof Pankow, soon to be demolished (it seems to be doing a pretty good job at doing that all by itself).
Need to shake a feeling of doom and gloom and a great sadness? What better place than the almost always windswept guess where?
I walked via Platz der Luftbrücke this time. The route on Komoot: https://www.komoot.com/tour/369693442.
This disgusting mess has now been there for about three weeks for no apparent reason or purpose other than to make the place look even uglier and restrict my use of my balcony even more than they already have done for two years now. I am sick and tired of looking at it. I can’t believe the way they feel entitled to do this to others for so long. And I am completely powerless. Even our Hausverwaltung is on their side. They are renovating a building which is under “Denkmalschutz” which means they can do whatever they like to neighbouring buildings. For years and years.
My only “light at the end of the tunnel” right now is that by the time I have been vaccinated (1 July plus two weeks) hotels and holiday homes in Germany will be open so I can get out of this place and spend a couple of months at the North Sea, and return fit to face another autumn, winter, spring …..? without a balcony and with all this ugliness to look at.
Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten
